Chapter Twenty Five

Clouds. That was what he remembered the most from that day. Piles of gray, the color of bullets and the lives they took, were suspended above his head, as though they were weighted upon it. They were full of rain, of suppressed precipitation that seemed to mirror his own hidden emotions. Everyone around him was crying, yet he remained stony and rigid, like a gravestone.

"We are gathered today to celebrate the life of a loving husband, a caring father, a devoted cop…."

He bit his lip, not wanting to hear the dull, empty words of the minister. He was disgusted with the fact that the man had to use notecards. Notecards. The man talking didn't know his father at all! Why was he allowed to preach about "the fullness of this man's life" and "Although we will all miss him, we have to believe that God is taking care of him", when he didn't understand the magnitude of the situation at all?

"It's all right, Derek," he heard his mother whisper. "Hold onto my hand, okay?" He clutched her hand tightly, and as he did so, he felt her wedding band under his fingers. The metal seared through his skin, the symbolism of the ring gutting him instantly.

The clouds, overwhelmed with moisture, finally broke.

Rain fell.

Derek shook himself alert. He looked down and realized his right hand was shaking and sweaty. Brushing his forehead with his palm, he realized that it was covered in perspiration as well. He felt tear tracks on his cheek.

Why? Why were these old memories plaguing him now? Why did they have to resurface as he was going through something almost as miserable? The death of his father still tasted just as bitter as it did all those years ago, it still haunted him, clutched him in a vice-like grip.

He had been with his father when he died. He had seen the lead ball penetrate a vulnerable patch of flesh, seen a sudden puddle of blood begin to expand, seen how his father fell like a floppy puppet. And he had run. Run from the masked perpetrator still wielding the gun. He hadn't tried to save his father, hadn't tried to stop the bleeding, hadn't even held his hand as he departed this earth. He had run. He hadn't tried to defend his father. He had run.

In his mind, Derek subconsciously replaced his father with Penelope, and the gunman with not just Kevin, but a black cloud. The black cloud that had been draped over her ever since she had been attacked was poised to strike. And he ran. Penelope was helpless against what haunted her, and all he could do was run. He heard her screams as they raked against his ears, but he was powerless to rush to her side. He ran.

"Derek." Rossi's voice cut through his second horrifying fantasy. Morgan jumped. He was unaware that the older agent had been there the whole time.

"This isn't your fault, you know. You can't be blamed for what happened with Penelope. You can't be held responsible for what Kevin did, or how she started to suffer from PTSD."

"Says you, Rossi. You weren't the one who had her in your home. You weren't the one that left her alone while you went off to hunt bad guys when the real bad guy was right here in Quantico." Derek swallowed hard, feeling like a slimy, thick stone was lodged in his throat.

"But it wasn't your fault she ran. That was her decision, a decision influenced by the effects of a trauma you didn't give her."

"I was the one taking care of her, though. I was the one who swore on my very life to protect. I was the one that fell in love with her and the one I thought she fell in love with back." As soon as the last sentence was out, he regretted saying it. It wasn't a confession he was willing to voice aloud quite yet.

"She loves you, Derek. That much I know. And I don't think she ever truly doubted your love for her, especially when you consider the fact that you were the one who saved her from Kevin. Without you, she would've died for sure from what he did to her."

"Then why run? Whatever she was going through, even that pregnancy, it wasn't something we couldn't have worked past."

For a moment, there was silence. Rossi seemed to be having a debate with himself over what to say. Finally, he spoke.

"Derek, I'm going to tell you something that you should probably listen to. When I was younger, I was a lot like you. I liked to mess around with a lot of women, not really into the whole relationship thing. But then…..I met Caroline. My first wife. We met at a club. We…uh…..hooked up that night. A couple months later, a friend of hers called me out of the blue, long after Caroline and I had gone our separate ways. She told me that I had gotten her pregnant. That Caroline had been so horrified and ashamed that she didn't want to tell anyone, least of all me. Apparently, she had spiraled, fallen into a depression. She was going to be a single mother, all alone, but she was too ashamed of herself to call me, the father. Her friend had had to go through all her stuff to find the number I had given her, just in case we ever, you know, wanted to 'do it', again."

"…It's not the same, Rossi. She was living with me. Although I never had sex with her, we had kissed a lot. And I wasn't even the father of her child. The father was a rapist son of a bitch." Rossi sighed, realizing that his passionate speech hadn't made much of a difference.

"She'll come back, Derek. She'll come back to you one day, and my guess is she won't blame you in the least for anything that happened. She'll come back and she'll still love you…..she'll probably apologize for leaving you because that's the type of person she is. You need to have faith."

"Faith?" Morgan practically spat. "I gave up on faith when that bullet struck my father's head. I gave up on faith when a bastard used me for years. And I'm giving up faith because if God were real, he wouldn't have taken the only woman I've ever loved with my entire heart away from me."

"Don't give up on faith, Derek. God saved Penelope from death when she was mere inches from it….twice. Both times, you were praying. He won't let you go through more than you can handle. Penelope will come back to you. You have to believe that, you hear me?"

Derek sighed resignedly. He rubbed his head with his hand and squinted his eyes shut in concentration.

"That's all good and fine…as long as she's still alive. What if she's dead, Dave? What if she CAN'T come back to me? What am I to do then? I don't think I can go on each day….without her being there…knowing that she'll never be."

Silence blanketed the air and hung like a storm cloud about to unleash hell upon the both.